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Is the KindleFire really that great? Has anyone used one yet?

I haven't played with the Fire yet, but I'm always very dubious of the "tech analyst". Let's face it, dominating the Android tablet market isn't all that difficult right now, as there is a dearth of poorly built, poorly performing Android tablets on the market today. My own personal opinion is that the OS offers a lot of promise, but ironically the real value of the Fire is its connection to Amazon's own "walled garden" of products and services, which flys directly in the face of Android's selling characteristic of "openness".

Randomly, my friend won a Kindle Fire at an office holiday function and I got to play around with it last night. Here are my impressions: First, it's very simple to use though it has that same noticeable lag that all Android tablets seem to have, though I will say not as pronounced as others. It has a rubber-like backing in the same style that the NOOK Simple Touch employs, so it feels good in your hands and won't slide around. Here's one thing that I was surprised about; it's a bit of a brick, meaning it's a lot heavier than I expected. For an eReader, weight seems like a big deal, so I would definitely take one for a test-spin before buying if you can, especially if you're going to use it for long reads. My friend only had one copy of a book, and I thumbed through pretty quickly, and the Fire seemed to handle it well. It had a lot less lag page turning than it did starting apps. On the web, the Fire did pretty well, it downloaded and ran pages smoothly for the most part. Though I will say I went to one of my favorite sites (arsenal.com) to watch some video highlights of yesterday's game, and even though it has a 7 inch screen, the video "wasn't optimized" for the Fire, so the playback size was smaller than it would have been on my iPhone (postage stamp size). On ESPN.com though it seemed to handle video there much better. My other complaint was that the Fire didn't seem to recognize page widths very well, so you have to do a lot of pinching to get the right view of a page in portrait view. So, I'll put down my pocket-protector, ease off the dork-pedal a bit, and just say for the price it's a solid tablet that runs pretty well.

Usability expert Jakob Nielsen finds that the Kindle Fire comes up short as a reading platform.

Publishers Weekly's Fire assessment.

If you are considering a Kindle Fire, you may want to check out this new review.

NOOK fires back at the Kindle HD tablet offerings by launching a 7 & 9 inch tablet available in November.

A side-by-side look at the Nook Color and the new Kindle Fire. But can it really take on the iPad? CNET wonders here: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20112696-1/will-the-kindle-fire-threaten-to-burn-%20the-ipad

Amazon.com today unveiled its long-awaited color tablet, the Amazon Kindle Fire, at an event in New York that also saw the introduction of two new e-readers. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said the tablet, which ships Nov. 15, would retail for $199. "We're building premium products at non-premium prices," he said.

Is Amazon's Kindle the new iPod? The end of book publishing as we know it? Or one too many in a pile-up of trendy gadgets and gizmos?.Anne Thompson, news from the entertainment source: Variety.Amazon's Kindle gets fired up.

Negative customer feedback prompts a speedy response by Amazon.

Amazing numbers from China.  50% of the population under 29 read e-books (generally on cell phones)

This interview with the founder of Talking Points Memo describes the process of his nutty personal blog became respected "independent media." TPM broke the Duke Cunningham bribery scandal and the US Attorneys firing scandal. Perhaps this is the authority "test" for political blogs -- they must break a major news scandal. Whatever you think of him, Matt Drudge made his bones by breaking the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

What happens when you extend your brand/clout too far? Scholastic is taking heat for promoting non-book merchandise to kids, with video games causing the biggest uproar.

Interesting analysis of the iPad and  Kindle Fire and discussion of what it might mean for publishers.

Thoughtful analysis of the questions raised by Amazon/KIndle automatic annotations of e-book content via the X-Ray feature on the Kindle Fire.

Because of the cloud-based storage of the Kindle Fire, no syncing is necessary. And Mr. Bezos goes on to take a swipe at Apple. "That model, that you are responsible for backing up your own content, is a broken model," he says. The most recently used items, no matter what the content is, will be stored in a task bar/carousel interface.

Amazon's Kindle strategy: subsidize the device by selling content. In theory a good proposition for publishers.

Amazon Announces New Kindle Format 8 for Graphics Rich eBooks